Bananas, Bison and Bites

I am finishing this off in the midst of packing for my trip... toothbrushes, folded clothes and the ever-elusive wallet are scattered all about. I will be updating this blog again on Sept 16th, when I return to Victoria... tah!

Sept 1st - Labour Day

Got in a good afternoon of COD4 with a half-dozen of my friends, and I have to say I did pretty well in a few of the games, much better than my usual 1:1 balance of kills/deaths. Good for a reflex game, though the insane 3-second-average lifespan of players in Unreal Tournament still gives me the willies - that's just too frenetic to enjoy. What's the point of getting blasted a hundred times in a few minutes - the score means little when your head feels like exploding from the motion sickness. Blech.

Few people think much about the origins of Labour Day - to most, it is simply 'that holiday before school starts for the year' ... which is sad, as it celebrates the toil and hard work of generations of Canadians.

Sept 2nd - Mona Lisa and Bananas

Caught up on some reading today, including a book I picked up while visiting Nanaimo on the weekend: The Annotated Mona Lisa. I have always had an interest in Art History, especially poignant now that I live just down the street from a top-tier gallery here in Victoria... and I just missed the Andy Warhol exhibit due to being sick this month.

On the topic of art: it seems a website I had a hand in creating as a joke is actually generating some traffic - LOTS of traffic! The Church of the Banana was a site created as a joke amongst Brian, Mike and myself... though it does not use Drupal, it still looks damn decent to my eyes. Somehow though, people have been finding it on the web, and the numbers skyrocketed in August.

Sept 3rd - Spiders

I really need to get some custom screens made for my apartment windows... most places here in Victoria do not have screens, as the bug count is amazingly low all year round. Yet there are other things that like to explore nice, warm apartments on cold nights...


For the second time in two weeks, I've found a large spider crawling through my apartment. For those of you that do not know, I am not fond of spiders. Not screaming-insane scared mind you, but I do take pains( hah )to catch them / kleenex-kill them. Ironically, I was humming 'itsty-bitsy-spider' this morning as I stepped into the shower, a childhood memory of my mom telling me that spiders were dancing on the shower head... and what do I find clinging to the shower curtain? A whopping big spider, of course. Irony. Hate it.

For those of you who might laugh: see my blog on July 2nd to see how much I enjoy the thought of a spider bite. Especially given the possibility of other complications, like Arachnogenic Necrosis, that may occur from bites., along with other symptoms, some of which I have personally experienced. Before you ask: yes, I can still watch Arachnophobia easily, and do not run from spiders... and I let these two( or the same one? )go free outside - FAR away outside. So: bite me.

Anyway, as you can see from the pictures, they're bigger than a loonie, with legs than spanned about 3 inches across. For a spider, that's large, and seeing one of these crawling across your floor is an experience - it's large enough to cast a shadow!

Yes folks, that's right: they grow them BIG out here. Not tarantula size, but I KNOW what tarantulas look like, and behave like. Each time, after detaining, photographing and releasing the spiders, I tried to look them up online. They're not Brown Recluses, native to the southeastern USA, and they're not the deadly Hobo Spider - that's about the size of your pinky fingernail, about 0.5 inches across.

No, whatever these were, they are going to be on my mind awhile, at least until I manage to get them identified to put my mind at ease. Wrestling with one for control of my TV remote is NOT my idea of late-summer fun in B.C.

Sept 4th - Monkeys?

I was thinking over the old saw, that if monkeys had seen what civilization would develop into, they would never have come down out of the trees in the first place( Gangsta Rap and Roseanne come to mind ). I hereby dub our natural reaction to such things the 'Screaming Monkey Reflex'. You can see how some monkeys have adapted to the human world here... in Costa Rica, where my sister is considering moving. Her friends have told her NOT to bring her cats though, as the monkeys get in though windows and do not like domestic pets much.

So the urge to climb into a tree to fling feces and fruit is perhaps understandable, but impractical in today's society. Sad what we have lost... though I do not miss the nits, or the lack of television. Funny, since I recently stopped my cable TV service. A vestigial monkey reflex at work, mayhaps?

Sept 5th - Silverfish and Sleep

For the last few months, my smoke alarm has been beeping. Not continuously, but on and off, usually at night. I've lost a fair deal of sleep, as it goes off just long enough to wake me, then stops. Only just the other( early )morning, I blasted it with some compressed air... and a silverfish fell out and scuttled away. I nearly smacked my forehead in frustration as I recalled the same thing happening a few years ago at The Prince - but a herd of the little critters had made a home in the ceiling space there, into which the smoke alarm had a large hole cut for its A/C power. Cue Fire Department at 4am, and an annoyed Superintendent... and a lot of foam spray to seal it all up.

Finally, after one particularly annoying episode here in Victoria, I'd had enough. This morning I pulled it out of its ceiling cradle and had a good look to see what I could do. A creative application of duct tape and foam trim substituted nicely for a lack of expanding foam spray, to seal off the inside of the smoke alarm from the ceiling cavity. They should really make these things with some kind of seal for the wires, so that this kind of problem doesn't happen. Many people would sleep better - I can attest.

Sept 6th - Mocking Sunshine

Stuck working on the weekend, with the sun shining mockingly just out of reach beyond armoured glass and big, bright windows. It is weekends like this that I ( only sometimes )wish I had a job outside... though not pumping gas.

At least working the later shifts on the weekends means I can sleep in and make a decent breakfast - cold cereal cannot compare to fresh pancakes, eggs and turkey bacon to put a good spin on the rest of your day

I was tired tonight, but had trouble falling asleep - with the windows closed, this place gets HOT. It registered 31 degrees in the main room at midnight, but started falling after I relented and opened the windows - briefly - to blast in some cooler air.

Sept 7th - Bison Balls

I have mentioned before how much I despise people who walk into a place where the staff are stuck inside all day, and the first words out of their mouth are "Gosh, it's SO beautiful outside!" - makes my hand scrabble for the Tiger Pit button... *sigh*

It figures that weather-wise, Victoria is now going to have PERFECT 100% Sunny Skies ALL WEEK while I am on vacation in ANOTHER province... likely getting rained on while sitting in a Tim Horton's. Somewhere, the weather gods are ROTFL at me. Fair, life ain't.

I had dinner at my parent's after work, along with my Aunt & Uncle who were visiting from Niagara - the first people to do so, family or friends, so we were all thrilled they could make it. We had spaghetti and bison balls for dinner... well, meatballs made from bison meat, which is so low in fat that I can have more than a few with no bad reaction. They provided much amusement at the table!

My relatives flew IN using Sunwing Airlines, the same people I got such a great deal from for my own flight tomorrow. They said that the only thing they did not like was the in-flight movie; otherwise it was as pleasant a trip as they have ever had, and being world travelers I found that most comforting a statement. Ironically, they will be flying OUT on the same flight I will be flying IN on when I return to Victoria, so we may pass by each other in the airport at some point.

That's it - more in a week and a day after I return from Niagara. And Welcome to the Silver Spider of the Sea, our newest Commentator - have they taken over from the Comment Christ, who has not spoken in some weeks? Only Time will Tell!

Time, Trips and TV

The week started off slow, but picked up steam as it went along... and only a little over a week now until Niagara - hooray! Added Aug 29th entry update on 9/3rd.

Aug 25th - Recovery in Time

Still working on recovering from my cold today, though all that remains is a total lack of energy. At least it didn't develop into any other stages; I hate coughing and sneezing. A lot. At least I had plenty to keep me occupied, though I did drift in and out of consciousness a lot more than usual today, for a day off. Waking up suddenly from the middle of a game of Civ:Rev can be disconcerting, as I tend not to fall asleep easily when feeling well.

I did manage to finish reading the third book in the Island in the Sea of Time series, entitled On the Oceans of Eternity - a massive book, as they all were, and utterly engrossing in their detail. Other favourite alternate history books of mine are the classic If the South Had Won the Civil War and The Peshawar Lancers. Some folk take it a little too far though, and examine EVERY point in history as a 'what if' - see some of the results here.

Aug 26th - Why me?

Another The Customer-Is-Always-Right day... boy, did I have a doozy today. In brief, the highlights: A woman was visiting from England, and didn't agree / understand / care about policies in Canada for money transfers. She carried on to a point where I was about to call the police to have her removed from the store - then I managed to foist her off onto Western Union, where she chewed a strip a mile wide through various levels of CSR's. After she managed to disconnect herself from them, and using my massive experience in Idiocy Deflection, I managed to get her the hell out of my store, WITH her transfer, and a fervent wish that the next foreign country she visits will have a standing policy of shooting monomaniacal foreigners who think they are Righter Than Thou, despite ignorance of a different country's rules, laws and common decency.

I only wish I could see the look on her face as they take the safety off and cock the hammer back... *sigh* Not really. But still: See Not-Always-Right.com for more amusement - I find the person asking a clerk at a dollar store how much a particular item is to be endlessly entertaining...

Aug 27th - Bananas and TV

So far, my lack of television has not made an appreciable dent in my day' schedule. If anything, I am now free to watch what I want, when I want - much as back when the VCR was introduced, followed by the PVR... anything I want to see is on the PC, on DVD, or on YouTube. In fact, I have been discovering a LOT of shows are on YouTube, some of which I had never expected to ever see again. Along with some things that perhaps are better seen once, then forgotten again... quickly.

On a side note, I received an email today which was a first: someone actually FOUND a website I had co-developed years ago both as a joke and exercise in web-building. Yet in my Inbox today sat a note that asked how one becomes a member of The Church of the Banana ... ? Well, to be honest, I'd never expected anyone to actually WANT to do more than laugh if they stumbled across the site... and frankly, I am not sure if we are going to respond, as anyone who WANTS to become One with the Great Banana kinda scares me. On several levels.

Aug 28th - Silent Voices

I did a bit of a double-take today while rooting around searching for voice actors, to add to my research about getting into that profession. To my sorrow, I found out that two actors whose work I had so admired in some of my faviorite shows had died, in both cases several years previous! Tony Jay, better known as Megabyte in ReBoot( and characters in countless other shows )passed on in August 2006. Preceding him into the Binomial Abyss was the aptly-named Long John Baldry, who also voiced several characters in ReBoot and had a solid singing career. In both cases, they had voices that were utterly distinctive and recognizable in any work they did.

There's just something that appeals to me about the voice acting. Having a good voice is a must, but one has to be flexible in many ways. Though people like Rich Little have obviously been gifted with voices and mimicry beyond almost anyone, most voice actors are still able to voice several dozen different types of characters - hence the term 'actor' you will note. Unlike some limited voice actors, or people like Sugar( formerly of YTV, whose voice is incredibly high )the whole idea is NOT to get typecast - while certain roles may be perfect for YOUR voice, they do not come along each day, so you cannot make a living doing just ONE type of voice. Heck, look at John Tesh... he's still hosting a radio show, albeit a very popular one in syndication. Plus a singing career. Hmmm....

Aug 29th - Deadly Dust

EDIT: I almost forgot - I attended BluesBash'08 tonight, with a few of my neighbours. We stopped at the Market Square for dinner first, to eat at Green Cuisine, a buffet-style all-vegetarian place. Amusingly, the most popular menu item were the fries... though I liked the veggie falafel. In any case, we settled in for a COLD evening by the water to watch Jim Byrnes, along with special guests The Sojourners. It was a great crowd, and Jim related quite a few touching stories about his long musical career and the Blues. Oh, and the music was good too. *grin*

I had to make a dash for Starbuck's though, as the concession booths only had one hot drink: coffee, and none of us drank that. So I skipped to Starbuck's at the Bay Center to pick up some drinks; hot chocolate for me, and some weird needed-a-full-page-written-on-a-napkin green drink for the others. Reminded me of hot Romulan Ale, for as Scotty would have said after a sniff: "It's ... it's green." We were the only ones there with Starbucks; my smiling charm got me past the gate guards, who could relate to the lack of hot bevvy variety at the fest. Go me!

An odd thing happened to my PC today, which scared me for about ten minutes until I ran out of creative technical swear-phrases. In short: my screen went black & white, then blank. Period. Seeing as this is my one and only machine for the vast majority of work I do apart from my day job, I understandably started to sweat bullets.

Fortunately, a little down-time seemed to fix the error, and a thorough cleaning actually cooled the blue beast down some more - dust does tend to build up in there, all too quickly. Ironically, I am writing a 'Basic PC Maintenance Guide' for Cyberwalker.com, so perhaps my own PC is trying to tell me to finish the Guide off soonest! I guess I will have to get my air cleaning going again in the main room.

Or buy a new computer. I must admit, lagging so far behind the technical edge is starting to become a bother, especially since I can only do a few things at a time before the beast overloads. *sigh* Maybe in the new year... one of these would be nice, but I would settle happily for one of these, and so would my wallet, at that!

Another reason for a new PC: Fallout 3. I have a penchant for post-apocolyptic: Mad Max, Deathlands( the earlier books are much better )and After the Bomb are all favourites of mine. Something about mutants, radiation and the fact that the customer service industry would be reduced simply to having shotguns held ready under counters as a final measure appeals to me greatly.

Aug 30th - Friendship

I had an interesting line of thought run around my brain today, as it has on occasion over the years. Whilst ruminating on the various friendships I have formed over the years, I once again thought about the vagaries of life that occur to toss people together, and tear them apart again. Childhood friends, school friends, work friends, social friends, family friends, online friends... the list of friends is as many and as varied as one can imagine - meeting people can happen anywhere, from the grocery store to in the middle of a river.

What I find interesting is how MANY of these friends that one keeps over the years, and at what level. I have known people who have few friends, but those they have are very close, like family. Other people seem transitory, changing friends every year and swapping social circles like socks. Happily, in my own case I have been very lucky to have met some fine friends early in life, and continued the trend all along. I count many dozens of people among those whom I am proud to call friend, from all walks of life and all manner of meetings.

One person who has made a study of friendships, a Prof. Dunbar, has come up with something now being referred to as 'Dunbars Number. In essence, the good prof theorizes that people are hardwired to not have more than 150 friends at any one time. The theory is mentioned in this article, which is a good read. I find it fascinating, as I am using technology to stay in touch with my far-flung friends - this blog is but one example of such.

Aug 31st - Nanaimo: not just a tasty dessert

I spent the day today traveling to the lovely city of Nanaimo, 1.5 hours north of Victoria, about the size of St. Catharines. I've enjoyed day trips on the Island, as I have not spent much time outside the Greater Victoria region - much the same as travelling to Toronto from the Niagara region. Only FAR greener, and with a LOT more mountain scenery.

We stopped along the way at the town of Chemianus, whose claim to fame are dozens of outdoor murals in the main downtown area. Apparently the local sport is Tourist Dodging, which is played much the same around the world as in Niagara Falls: dodge your car around various idiot tourists with cameras, who are looking at everything BUT the Big Dangerous Metal Things on the roads!

Lunch was at the Crow & Gate, a reproduction English Pub located way back in the country roads of Cedar, B.C. It is an authentic British Pub( built in 1972 )right down to the low ceilings, massive use of wood everywhere and the Bar Ordering System. Yes, that's right: you line up at the bar to place your order and pay BEFORE the meal, get your drinks, and then the food is brought out to you. Slow and inefficient, but it's authentic... and you get the chance to talk to your fellow line-goers in the bargain. It was a little cold to sit outside, but they had a lovely English garden surrounding the pub, including a pond with, of all things, black swans! Photo op!

Nanaimo itself was very... hilly. Everything descended to the sea from the hills, with the downtown core in an L-shape whose long end pointed away from the ocean and towards the brand-spankin' new shopping mall. Yep, all that way and we ended the trip wandering around a half-completed mall.. with a new Best Buy, the first on the island. I scored some dirt-cheap 'Grand Opening Special' SD memory cards and an Ultimate Edition of The Fifth Element, one of my all-time favourite films. Go Milla Jovovitch...! Did I mention she's starred in several apocolyptic films, like Resident Evil? And did I also mention she sings?

Sadly, I'd developed a stinker of a headache from the trip, perhaps due to the lovely sunny skies - high air pressure ya know. I am pleased to report that I have suffered FAR fewer headaches here in BC than I did in Ontario ... likely due to the much more stable barometric pressure levels that can trigger headaches in some people, such as myself. So I begged off dinner plans and sank into a Tylenol-induced snooze for a few hours, to wake feeling moderately human again, though not enough to do more than putter on the PC until snoozing.


That's a wrap - for some reason this week's blog just would NOT flow until the late hours turned into the early hours. Ah well - it's on paper, so to speak, and I can sleep.